Center of Gravity and Inertia

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S-E-A designed and built the first Vehicle Inertia Measurement Facility (VIMF) in 1994 for a major vehicle manufacturer. The following year, S-E-A built a second VIMF for use in its own vehicle dynamics laboratory in Columbus, Ohio. Over 20 years later, both machines are still in operation, as are numerous other VIMFs at automotive manufacturers’ facilities around the globe. S-E-A is proud of the fact that the VIMF has remained the gold standard in vehicle inertia measurement devices for more than two decades.

The original design of the VIMF has proven itself to be very robust, reliable and extremely accurate. In 2015, the VIMF was redesigned with an upgraded state-of-art control system, additional automation and improved ergonomics, while still providing the same high-quality measurements of vehicle mass, vehicle center-of-gravity, and vehicle inertia properties. These upgrade features have been designed so that existing VIMF machines can be retrofitted with the new features.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Commission (NHTSA) has performed all rollover propensity tests for their New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) at the S-E-A facility in Columbus, Ohio since 2002.

Similar to the VIMF, S-E-A's Vehicle Inertia Parameter and Evaluation Rig is being utilized by the U.S. Army to determine mass, center-of-gravity location, and inertia measurement for vehicles weighing up to 100,000 lbs. S-E-A has also created machines capable of capturing center of gravity and inertia measurements on rigid body objects weighing up to 3,000 lbs. These machines offer the same high level of accuracy and are ideal for objects with non-proportional dimensions, such as engines.